there. I suppose she will be hanged."

Ralph waited. He knew it was no good asking too much.

"What she said of the King's death and the pestilence is enough to cast
her," went on Cromwell presently. "And Bocking and Hadleigh will be in
his hands soon, too. They do not know their peril yet."

They went on to talk of the friars, and of the disfavour that they were
in with the King after the unfortunate occurrences of the previous
spring, when Father Peto had preached at Greenwich before Henry on the
subject of Naboth's vineyard and the end of Ahab the oppressor. There
had been a dramatic scene, Cromwell said, when on the following Sunday a
canon of Hereford, Dr. Curwin, had preached against Peto from the same
pulpit, and had been rebuked from the rood-loft by another of the
brethren, Father Elstow, who had continued declaiming until the King
himself had fiercely intervened from the royal pew and bade him be
silent.

"The two are banished," said Cromwell, "but that is not the end of it.
Their brethren will hear of it again. I have never seen the King so
wrathful. I suppose it was partly because the Lady Katharine so
cossetted them. She was always in the church at the night-office when
the Court was at Greenwich, and Friar Forrest, you know, was her
confessor. There is a rod in pickle."

Ralph listened with all his ears. Cromwell was not very communicative
on the subject of the Religious houses, but Ralph had gathered from
hints of this kind that something was preparing.